2. Iris

"Iris. You do know that the ermine is a carnivore, right?"

I look down at the bowl of leafy greens and vegetables in my hands, then huff out a sigh. "Sorry. I must have grabbed the box for the snowshoe hare instead."

Jenni, my most valuable employee and friend since childhood, raises her eyebrow. "Because rabbits and long, white weasels look so similar."

I know. Their food isn't even close together in the refrigerator. Ermine will definitely eat baby rabbits if they get the chance, so they're not even remotely close to the same species.

"Sorry," I say, turning back to get the right food. "I'm just a little out of it I guess."

"Yeah, I've noticed," she snorts. "You've been a space case ever since that guy came in from the rival rehab center earlier today."

"Jenni. There are no rivalries in wildlife care," I scold her lightly.

Except that isn't true.

I am still really grumpy about the encounter earlier today. For one thing, I keep pretty good tabs on how things happen in Oakwood. It's not hard… I get coffee at the Mocha Moose, the only coffee shop in town, every day.

I come for the coffee, stay for the gossip.

There hasn't' been any talk about a different rescue coming to town. Someone bought a ton of land that used to belong to a mining company a while back, but there's no way that a new wildlife rescue would have appeared out there.

Someone would have told me.

Sheesh, arrogant much, Iris?

I sigh and swap out the snowshoe hare's food bowl for the ermine's. I could absolutely be wrong. I like living here, and I was pretty sure that most of the citizens of Oakwood liked me, too.

I mean, until this morning, I had also been pretty sure that I knew everyone.

I guess not.

Not only is Oakwood a small town where you do start to know everyone, I'd definitely remember the man who came in this morning.

I'd nearly passed out at the sight of him.

"Got it," I smile at Jenni, waving the ermine's bowl of defrosted frozen mice.

She eyes me from where she's bottle-feeding a fawn that someone found wandering the woods. "You know he's probably not going to go for that."

"Yeah. But we can at least try to get a meal in him before he goes back."

"I think he'd probably be happier to just hunt the mice around the center."

That's also definitely true.

I cautiously open the ermine's kennel. We had to put him in one of the ‘flight risk' ones, since he's not only small and fast, but extremely good at getting through small spaces.

As one would have to be, to hunt mice regularly.

"Here you go little guy," I whisper, pressing the mice forward. I'm sure they smell like freezer and chemicals, even though I rinsed them in water ahead of time.

I see a small black nose poke out from the blanket that he's tucked beneath, but then he pulls back, a shivering blob in the cheap fabric.

He definitely won't eat in front of me.

Ermine are very secretive creatures. This one was brought to us by a construction crew, who found him pinned under some rocks that had fallen on the job site. A few weeks later, his cracked rib seems to be healed, but I still haven't actually seen him eat.

I'd like to keep him a little longer, just to make sure everything is good, but I agree with Jenni.

Wild things just need to be wild sometimes.

I shut the kennel and walk away. If he hasn't nibbled the mice later this evening, I'll have Jenni let him out.

My shift is over after this.

And I've spent the vast majority of it thinking about the man from earlier.

I mean, no one has a right to be that darn handsome.

He'd been tall and built like he was going to lay siege to a castle or something. Huge shoulders, giant biceps. Dark hair that looked like he'd done his best to tame it, but it curled and twisted around his face like crazy.

His eyes had been amber. Not just like brown.

Amber.

"Okay. What exactly happened before I got here?"

Jenni's voice makes me jump. "Nothing."

"Not nothing. What happened to the wolf who came in last night."

I gulp. "Oh. Um. Someone came to get him. Apparently, he was at a different rescue, and he got out."

Jenni's eyebrows pinch together. "He got out?"

"Yeah. And the head of this new rescue came to get him."

"You sound a little weird, Iris."

I sigh. "I am. It was weird. I didn't want to release the wolf, but he had all the right papers and everything."

"I see. And this has bothered you all day, hasn't it?"

I narrow my eyes at her. "No."

"Clearly, I believe you," she says with a smirk.

"Okay. It's bothered me all day."

"Do you feel like he's going to like... hurt the wolf?"

I shake my head. "No, he seemed…"

I can't say trustworthy, because I don't know that.

But he definitely didn't seem like he was going to harm the wolf.

"You don't think it's bothering you because you feel more than a little protective about the center?"

I give my friend my most harsh look.

She laughs. "You have to stop trying to do that. It's like being glared at by a hobbit."

"And the hobbits were the ones who brought down Mordor," I snorted.

"Anyway. I think that you might be a little out of sorts because you don't want someone else to have your role of the patron saint of wild creatures."

"That's not true!" I straighten and put my hands on my hips. "I would be happy to have another rescue in town!"

"You'd be happy, as long as you're still allowed to be Snow White, right?"

"I…" my mouth snaps closed.

Jenni smiles at me. "I know, Iris. I've been your friend for a long time. It's okay; everyone wants to be recognized for what they do."

"That's not why," I say defensively.

She shakes her head. "Okay. Whatever you say."

"I think we need to chop up some more mice," I say with a frown.

She waves at me. "On it. Mice duty incoming."

I watch her go, my mind reeling.

Am I only mad because I feel defensive of someone on my territory?

Or is it something else?

Finally,I'm done for the day. I look up at the clock, noting that I've still got plenty of daylight to burn. I came in early because of the wolf, and while Jenni always has the closing shift, I usually stay a little later than I'm supposed to.

Today, though, I need to clear my head.

There's no better place to do that than out on the trails.

I knock on the office doorframe. "Hey, I'm out."

"Finally. Go home and sleep. Remind me that you're human," Jenni says as she spins in her chair.

"I sleep," I smile at her. I don't sleep well, but I do, in fact, sleep.

Sometimes.

Jenni rolls her eyes. "Sure. Don't bring in any more animals; we're pretty full."

I smile back. "No promises."

"Any fun afternoon plans?"

I smile wider. "I'm going to go for a hike."

"Okay," Jenni calls. "Have fun!"

I'll do that.

I come to work in clothes that can get dirty, and I have my hiking boots in the car. Leaving the clinic, I get in my reliable, if rusted, 4Runner, and head up toward the trail.

As I go, I let my thoughts wander, and I absorb the beauty around me.

I'm so lucky to live here.

My parents had a cabin in the Red Feather Lakes area when I was a kid. I loved coming up here then. It felt like another world, a magical place that was totally different from the dreary brown of Denver.

Everything felt better than my life in Denver. I lived for the summer months when I was a kid. I never wanted to play the whole popularity game or go to the fancy colleges all my peers were aiming for.

I've always known that I wanted to live in the mountains.

I had counted down the days until my high school graduation. I got my degree in wildlife biology from University of Colorado Boulder, then a veterinary degree from Colorado State University. As soon as I could, I moved up here and opened the clinic.

It's part wildlife rehab, part veterinary services. As with most rural businesses, I have to wear a lot of hats.

I'm happy to do it, because it means that I get to live here.

The sweeping peaks get closer as I move further up the mountains. The trail I'm heading for this afternoon is one of my favorites, and it follows a really pretty creek that rushes down a series of cataracts for about an hour before opening up into a meadow.

Given the daylight, I probably won't make it the full way up to the meadow, but I'll get as far as I can.

I park, put on my boots, grab my backpack, and take one look at my phone. There's no signal over here: I lost that pretty much immediately after I left town.

No point to the phone, so I leave it.

The first mile of the trail dips down into a narrow canyon, following the creek as it rushes between rocks. It's wet from the spray, and lush beds of wild roses and raspberries line the trail. I let my fingers trail over one of them, admiring the colorful columbines and shooting stars that nod in the breeze from the rushing water.

God, I love it here.

The trail opens up and crosses a flat part in the stream. I nimbly dance over a log that someone pushed down to serve as a bridge, before finding myself on the soft, somewhat hollow feeling ground again.

There's nothing to prove, up here. No one to judge me or ask me why I don't want to go to a party or get drunk. No one who thinks I'm weird for choosing to stay home and read instead of going out with other people my age.

It's peace. That's what I feel every time I'm out in nature. Peace.

I love animals and I love nature, but I've never been really good at the whole… human side of things. I love my parents, and I visit them regularly, but they never really understood why I wanted to be so far removed from society.

They love all the things that civilization gives them. They enjoy chain restaurants and fast food and the fact that a little robot will deliver them pizza if they want.

I don't care about any of that.

It used to hurt. Absently, I rub my chest as I think about the loneliness that I felt so often growing up.

I don't usually feel it here.

Maybe that's why the man earlier bothered me so much. He reminds me of all of the beautiful, rich, civilized people that I grew up with. People who made fun of me, that I never quite understood how to manage.

Yeah. He reminded me a lot of men who wouldn't bother to look at me twice, and it brought up all the feelings that were associated with the memory.

Men like that weren't, in my experience, interested in people like me.

In women like me.

Still, I think as I step over a particularly crusty-looking log, It would be nice to have someone like that look at me twice.

Just once.

There are quite a lot of downed trees in this area. I have to study the trail for a minute to figure out where to pick between them to follow it. There were a lot of avalanches last year, so it makes sense…

A grunt behind me catches my attention.

Ice skates down my spine.

Slowly, I turn.

When I look down the trail, my fears are confirmed.

There's a bear.

I'm not necessarily afraid of bears. Usually, if you're far enough away, they'll leave you alone.

The problem is that this bear is looking at me with far too much interest.

Please don't be a female. Please don't have a…

The very clear bleat of a bear cub to my right makes my heart skip a beat.

Shoot.

Bears are normally pretty docile. We need to keep them out of our trash, but they're not aggressive.

Not unless you're standing between a female bear and her cub.

Just like I am now.

To my right, there's a steep stretch of mountainside. To my left, there's a roaring cataract.

I have no idea what to do.

I hike with bear spray, but it's not going to do any good against a sow who wants to be next to her cub. Plus, I don't want to damage the baby bear's nose at all. Bear spray is essentially highly concentrated pepper spray, and I don't know what that will do to him.

"Hi, Mama Bear," I whisper, hoping that my voice will sound soothing.

She snorts.

Clearly, it does not.

I'm definitely going to be mauled by a bear. The sow snorts again, dropping to her feet. The baby bear bleats again behind me, and I wince.

Yep. This is it.

At least I'll make a nice last meal for them…

A growl rips through the air.

The mother bear rears up again, looking surprised. She's glancing over my shoulder still, but I'm too afraid to turn and look.

A warm body appears next to me. Cautiously, I turn my head.

Then I snap it right back.

There's a wolf next to me.

But this is not just a wolf. There is no way. An adult male gray wolf, even one of the big ones from Canada or Alaska, is about two and a half feet at the shoulder.

This one is four feet. Easily. Because I'm five foot three, and its shoulders come up to my chest.

Holy. Shit.

The wolf is brown, a kind of cinnamon color that seems unusual for the wolves around here. The color, however, doesn't seem to matter.

The fact that given its size, its teeth are probably the length of my forearm, is the problem.

The wolf's head is low as it stares at the bear. Its shoulder blades are pinched together, like its stalking forward.

The bear looks between me and the wolf. She's clearly distressed; she looks between the wolf and the cub, who is still grumbling and grunting behind us.

She makes a distressed grunt, and the wolf growls again.

Without thinking, I snap, "Oh leave her alone. She just wants to get her baby."

To my complete shock, the wolf turns around and looks at me.

Looks at me.

My heart gallops in my chest. "Um," I don't know what to say.

The wolf looks back.

Huffs.

And sits.

There's a total shocked silence in the woods. All I can hear is the breathing of all of us, and the rushing sound of water behind us.

And, of course, the baby bear calling for its mom.

The bear drops to all fours and cautiously walks a circle around us. The wolf and I both turn to watch it go, and then once it's fully behind our backs, she drops down behind a large tree.

Moments later, she pops up, bear cub firmly in her mouth.

The wolf and I watch her scamper up the trail.

Leaving me alone.

With a wolf the size of a small car.

I gulp, backing slowly away from the wolf.

It turns its amber eyes on me.

Winks.

Winks.

And stands.

Without looking back, the wolf lopes forward up the slope, following the path of the bear and cub.

I watch him go.

And then I go as fast as I can back down the trail to my car.